Foreman: Jury Wanted To Hear Charlie White's Defense

Secretary of State Charlie White Convicted Of 6 Felony Counts

Jurors were stunned when the defense didn't call any witnesses in the voter fraud trial of Secretary of State Charlie White, the jury foreman told RTV6.

Speaking for the first time since White was convicted of six felony charges early Saturday, foreman Gregg Weidman said it was a shock when White's attorney, former Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi, rested his case without calling any witnesses.

"I don't know if you saw the reaction when Mr. Brizzi said he wasn't going to call anybody, but I looked around the jury, and everybody's eyes were about this big, like, you have to be kidding," Weidman told RTV6's Derrik Thomas.

The case centered on White's residency. He said he lived at his ex-wife's house and registered to vote at that address. But prosecutors said he actually lived with his fiancee and now wife at a Fishers condo, which was outside his Fishers town council district.

In the face of that evidence, Weidman said jurors wanted the defense to show them something to challenge the presentation.

"Most of us felt that if the ex-wife would have testified, or the new husband had said, 'Yeah, he was living in our basement,' that would have been very telling. It would have been nice to actually hear from the new wife, too," he said.

When asked if he believed the jury would have acquitted White based on such testimony, Weidman said, "I feel we probably would have."

"We did what we thought we needed to do," Brizzi said of the decision not to call any witnesses. "There is no Monday morning quarterbacking."

The jury deliberated for 14 hours before returning guilty verdicts on six of the seven counts.

Weidman said the first vote the jury took was 9-3 to convict. It took all those hours to reach an unanimous decision.

"I hate to see anybody at 42 or 43 give up their dreams and their life, but he did it to himself," Weidman said. "We didn't do it as jurors. He did it. And we feel strongly that we made the right decision."